Cuiaba is a large rural city with a population of a million people. It was started in the 1700’s when it was just jungle, and the Portuguese came in search of gold. My attraction was not gold but the fact that the city is said to be the geographical centre of South America. Near the downtown area and next to some government building they have a 20m obelisk that was built in 1975. It is over the top of a stone marker that was put there by a famous surveyor in 1908. There isn’t a sign about the centre itself but there is a lovely new sign about all the people involved in putting up a sign about the people involved with the new sign. And there is probably good reason for that. Because.
Back in the 1990’s someone resurveyed it and said it was out about by 67kms and I’m assuming Google can confirm that. So that meant they were in the wrong place and I had to do a trip to the real one. Despite my enthusiasm to check it out I opted to spend a couple of days in Cuiaba at my hotel and wash my smelly clothes and try and destink my boots which were now starting to walk around by themselves. And rest up a bit after my long hard trip and prepare for the next leg.
Brazil is the 5th largest country in the world with Australia coming in at 6th. It has a population of 216 million people which makes it the 6th largest country in the world by population. It was discovered by the Portuguese in 1500. They started off by chopping down all the good Amazon trees and taking them back to Portugal. Next, they had some open land and started growing sugarcane but they had to bring in a few million African slaves from their other colonies to do that because the indigenous people wouldn’t help them for some reason. By 1700 they were the biggest sugar producers in the world.
After Napoleon won a few wars in Europe in the early 1800’s, the Portuguese Royal family had to flee to Brazil and it then became the capital of the Portuguese empire for a while. In 1822 the son of the Portuguese King gave Brazil independence and from then on it has been an independent nation. The have kept the Portuguese language and are the only country in South America who speak Portuguese. Considering that the population of South America is about 435 million, that means almost half the continent speaks Portuguese (Portugal itself, only has 11.5 million people). There are nine Spanish speaking countries on the continent. And as a trivia question, only two countries in South America don’t share a border with Brazil. They are Chile and Ecuador.
So back to 2024 and me. My current plan is to visit the real centre of South America then ride directly south for about 1500kms where I will end up at Iguazu Falls. Which is a big ticket item on my list. I had initially planned to do the falls on the way back up along the east coast after I’d been down the bottom but I’d heard that they have hash runs in Paraguay and that sounded fun. From the falls I plan to go west through Paraguay back to southern Bolivia and hopefully they will have fuel by then and I can check out the southern part of Bolivia before I head into Chile. Seems a good plan.
My hotel room in Cuiaba had a nice big window that faced the sun and a bathroom with an open window which meant I could lock my boots in there and not have to smell them. I bought disinfectant and paper towel and filled them with the soaked paper towel and put them in a sealed garbage bag overnight. It seemed to work okay. Next day I stuck them in the sunny window to dry them and then poured a heap of Bicarb Soda in them for 24 hours. I think I’ve solved the problem. I also washed and dried all my clothes and there was a fancy version of the dodgy electric shower which worked well, so I was ready to leave town smelling nice.
I didn’t do a lot in Cuiaba. I don’t think it rates highly as a tourist destination. I also discovered that I don’t speak Portuguese. And despite people saying Portuguese and Spanish are similar, I found that not to be true. If they didn’t speak English, then I spoke to them in Spanish. I had no idea if they understood me. I enjoyed my breakfasts at the Getullio Hotel and I found a little shop nearby that had a thing that was almost like a pie. It was good. It also had cutesie little bottles of coke. But I had a 1500km ride to do so I needed to get going. There was a highlight when I left. The valet who had ridden off on my bike also had to collect it for me and when he returned he said my lambswool seat cover was now dry. When he had ridden off smuggly the day I arrived it was soaking wet from riding in the rain which made no difference to me in my wet weather gear but gave him a wet crutch for a couple of hours. Obviously the bike has a good sense of humour.
It was a nice ride to the town of Chapada dos Guimarães. Green and interesting mountain ranges. Not unlike the NT in Australia but greener. The centre of South America is a few kilometres past the town and I had to park up my bike and walk in about 300metres. It was a Saturday and there were a few vendors in the carpark selling handcrafted stuff so I was happy leaving my bike there. Apparently during the week the carpark is deserted except for people stealing stuff from parked cars. If I’d gone there on a weekday I would have ridden my bike down the walking path to the monument.
I’d come a long way to see this monument and despite already knowing what it looked like I was still disappointed. It even had a fresh bit of dog poo next to it. I think that the council people in Cuiaba that made the sign, don’t want any fuss made about the real centre as it would make people think that their obelisk wasn’t important. It’s historical, that’s fine. Hopefully they will put something decent on the actual centre one day. But I was there, and I felt I had achieved a goal and as a bonus the place was a lookout, and the views were pretty awesome. Not high like the Andes but a pleasure to see. I gazed out for a while at Cuiaba in the distance and then went back to my bike, geared up and was on my way. I was hoping to do at least 400 more kilometres that day.
The roads were good. Long and straight and undulating forever. Lots of trucks, but nice newish ones that didn’t blow smoke, but went fast. It didn’t take long to work out that they sped up on the down hills and then struggled going up the uphills. The speed limit for trucks varied between 70 and 90 and cars generally about 110kph. But the trucks did 110 down hill and 70 uphill. I had to get my timing right because it was hard to pass them on the down hill as my bike can do 125+ but I don’t like it especially with the wind gusts coming off the trucks. Often you couldn’t pass on an uphill as it was single lane. I felt a lot more guilty as I crossed double lanes in Brazil and it doesn’t seem as common here.
There were also fixed radar cameras, quite regularly, I would say to myself what is this idiot doing but I then caught on and hopefully I didn’t get my photo taken. There were also a lot of toll gates on the road and in this part of Brazil motos have to pay as well. Its annoying because it was only about 20 or 50 cents but you had to stop, put the bike in neutral, and remove your gloves to get out the money to pay. I worked out a system where I just had a ziplock bag in the pocket of my tank bag with change and toll receipts in it, and when I pulled up, I just handed them the bag and let them help themselves. It got me a smile most times.
The countryside near the very centre had a mix of cattle and crops but as I went further south it just seemed to be crops. And mainly maize (corn) and cotton. There were no road fences and no property dividing fences. I’m not sure if the farms were gigantic or the occasional access road was the boundary line. The paddocks were dozens of kilometres long and stretched far into the horizon. I took this nice cotton photo and sent it to someone who said they’d prefer photos of the original jungle and sloths. Not cotton. That was sad. But we all need more cotton tee shirts. Even sloths? Sob.
There is an area called the Pantanal which is still natural jungle up near the Bolivian border and is a famous tourist area where you can visit and see the original Brazil. I didn’t go there as I plan to visit the amazon on my way up north next year. I made my destination town early and so just sailed past and went to the next town called Coxim. I found a roadhouse type place that had a cheap hotel with aircon and a restaurant with icy cold beer. The feed was also reasonable. I had done over 500kms which was good and had a nice sleep.
Next morning I left early and it was great to already be on the main road. I played truck tetras again but with much more skill. It was just endless undulating fields and small rural towns. Agriculture is huge in Brazil. And then I came across a small patch of natural jungle. I had to check online to see if it was true but yes. All this cropped land was once natural jungle. Sort of sad really. And hard to believe, but I suppose a lot of clearing can happen over generations. I found a fruit seller on the road and stopped for a stretch and bought some fresh grapes. Probably imported from California. Who knows. I don’t speak Portuguese.
I managed to average about 95kph but with stops and tolls that dropped back to about 80kph for the day. That meant I rolled into the town of Navirai just before dark and with a new record of 620kms for the day. It was good to know I could do that. I’d had the odd stop for water or an ice cream but it was a lot of time on the bike. But I felt fine. I found a hotel called Villa Verde online, but it looked a bit ordinary so I just went for a look and it was fine. Good in fact, and for Brazil was cheap at 125 reales ($33AUD) with breakfast and the couple who ran it were very nice. A single bed and very similar to my room in Antarctica except it was en-suited.
It was a Sunday night and I wandered down town and not much was happening but i found a cheap looking burger joint that was open. Plastic chairs and tables but the staff were nice so I stayed for dinner. For the first time I came across Antarctic beer. I knew about it from a beer trivia night in Antarctica, but it was nice to actually drink it in its country of origin. And then I realised it was Debs birthday and so I had a second bottle and sent her a toast. She would have been 68. Wow. The food was great and I had a chocolate bar on the way home. Happy Birthday Deb.
Next morning I had the included breakfast and dined alone. Needless to say, I filled up. They must have a standard hotel breakfast in Brazil because it was almost identical to the one in Cuiaba which was great. My two long days meant that I had only 350kms to do that day to get to Foz do Iguaçu which is the border town where Brazil and Argentina share a border and the Iguazu Falls. It was a nice hotel and once again I had underestimated the size of the city by a million people. I need some way of using my computer or phone to research how big a city is before I arrive. The hotel was nice. They spoke Spanish which was great, and I was able to check in easily and relax and make a plan for the next few days. I have a few things to do.
KMS 15,002
Gotaway 